While Stones Tumble, Let Us Play
by Little Tanuki
Summary: Ten drabbles. Fifteen years after DS9 "The Quickening", Ekoria's son remembers.
1. Memory

_**Give me a leaf, and I**__**'**__**ll hold it.**_

_**I'll turn it around in my hands, then drop it…**_

_**As it falls from my hands, to all the other leaves.**_

_**Then I'll look up, and ask you**_

_**What it was.**_

_**And if I do,**_

_**Will you tell me?**_

_**

* * *

****1. Memory**_

There is a saying among my people, that the first memory is the most important one we have, because no matter what other twists the universe has to place into our lives, no other memory will ever be our first.

Sometimes, when the night is too dark to see anything but what I imagine, I remember my mother. Perhaps her voice is nothing more than an echo of a dream. But it is the greatest treasure I possess, so I remember. "You can be anything," she whispers to me. "Poet, healer, spinner of dreams." I wake in the morning, knowing that I must do everything I can to make her words come true.

I know that she saw me. Visitors come occasionally to our world - and one of them was there to see, and tell. I lay upon her chest, newly born and wailing, and she looked at my face for no more than a moment. Between us, there was that one single moment, and then she was gone.

It is distant, barely formed, and perhaps the memory isn't even my own. But when asked about the first thing I remember, this is how I will always reply. Because before I could even understand what it meant to die for someone, my mother was the one who died for me. I will cling to her voice for as long as it remains - even if it really is just the echo of a dream.


	2. Flower, Part I

**2. Flower Part I**

I was five on the day when I saw the flower. Clear magenta met my sight, which faded to white at each slender petal's edge. But the pollen inside was what caught my attention the most, like a bright yellow star, and the green of its stem was even brighter. I watched as it trembled, almost as if it was excited to have found the breeze.

We don't get many flowers. Most of the old city has been covered with dust, buildings falling apart, that no-one ever found the will to put back together again. Dust and rags is all I remember of my early world. Dust and rags, and one solitary flower.

Light blinked across its surface, and I wondered if I should pluck it from the ground. A flower would make a beautiful gift for my best friend Alandi to tuck behind her ear.


	3. Mural

**3. Mural**

There are times - in my dreams - when I am inside the mural, that same mural that my father painted. These moments, I am floating. Eternal blue is high above me, and there is green and lilac on every side. I look down upon the domed roofs of the city, and there is a warm breeze - a clear smell in the air. The land around me is whole again as the light gleams pearly bright from every ceiling.

A voice comes from the depths of sleep. The dark eyed man who used to live on the edge of town, who showed me how to gather pigments of yellow, green and blue, and how even the dullest rocks and vegetation can yield a rainbow of vibrant colours. This is the call, the deep clear voice that speaks my name.

Then I think of the light reflecting from Alandi's hair. It is real in my dreams as if she were truly standing at my side. Her hair is long enough to reach her waist, and ever strand is a deep, gleaming brown. "Follow me," she insists - a new and welcome voice from somewhere just beyond my reach. And she laughs.

"Hurry! Follow me."

There are two of us, both tall, strong, long-limbed - nimble enough to climb over every part of this city on the wall. Alandi laughs, and I let her laughter fill my senses until it is the only sound that I can hear. We are poets together, healers, spinners of dreams. And for one more night it is just as my father must have said it would be. For just one more night, our world is whole.


	4. Red

**4. Red**

The others always told us, until we could hear their voices every time we approached the market square. If we saw anyone with red upon their cheeks, Alandi and I were not ever to stare. It was a lesson to both of us, so ingrained that we both obeyed the admonition without even noticing that we were obeying.

"I bet there's a special playground in there," Alandi told me once as we crouched together by the wayside. The windows of this building were covered by thick brown curtains, which neither one of us was ever allowed to peer through although they blocked whatever was inside from our view.

"I bet there's a whole secret world," I responded. We were seven years old, and painfully curious.

One man went there all the time - the oldest man I ever knew. He greeted us every time we saw him, smiled too - always with that same sad look behind his eyes - and offer us extra treats whenever he happened to have extra to offer. There was only one thing he ever refused when we asked, and that was to show us what was inside.

And it was on a bright, warm day just after my seventh birthday that there was no-one watching us, and we were finally able to sneak up for a closer look. With one hand each pulling back a section of the barrier, we crouched just far enough so that we could still see what was within. And just before we looked, I struggled not to laugh. It was too exciting for words, this secret world we were both so sure would be revealed.

Suddenly there was pressure against my neck, and I was tugged upright by the back of my collar. Beside me, Alandi nearly cried out in alarm, and I saw that she was struggling wildly. Then - feeling ominously cautious - I looked up.

Maia is the one who raised Alandi and I after our mothers were taken away. Her hair is black and tangled, and dust lines her shoes and the hem of her skirt. She smiles often, but there is sadness behind her smile. On that day, though, her face was hard as a stone, and I could find no sign that she would ever relent. Even as our skin burned from the shock of her punishing hand, even as she scolded us until we cried, I did not regret that she had found us. Otherwise I would never have been able to look away from what we had seen.

We found some berries the next afternoon. They had taken a long time to ripen, but now they were delicious. But as I plucked one from the tree, I turned it over in my hand, and stared at its surface before deciding that I wasn't hungry. I didn't like the berries any more, and I hated that flawlessly crimson shade across their skin.


	5. Stick

**5. Stick**

Alandi was laughing.

She'd found an insect, which looked exactly like a fallen stick, and squatted down to watch it play.

"Come join me!" she called, one hand beckoning. She was eight when she found the insect, but her birthday was coming very soon. Mine was almost four months later.

"Maybe we could pretend to be something else too, don't you think?" she asked me as I sat beside her. I told her that I didn't know.

"Like what would you be?"

Alandi shrugged. "Anything."

I'll be a rock, perhaps. Or a bird in the sky. Maybe one day, Alandi can pretend that her face is smooth and clear, without the spidery patterns that mark her skin.

We sat together and watched the insect, still caught in its very own game of make believe.


	6. Climbing

**6. Climbing**

"I bet you can't climb first to the very top of the tallest dome," said Alandi.

"How much?" I asked her.

"My best shiny hairpin against those new boots of yours."

Alandi's aunt had given her that hairpin, and she had gotten it in turn from a passing alien in need of a ride. "This is one of a kind," she had told her baby niece. And now it is one of my best friend's greatest treasures.

I didn't want to take it from her. But that wouldn't be half as bad as backing out of a dare. I nodded. "All right."

It is a steep climb, but not too difficult for those who know how. The best view of our town comes from a hole in the dome, where jagged bits of cloth and rubble have tumbled down into the space below. I stood in this exact spot, and watched the buildings and hills and people, and I waited for my friend to arrive beside me.

She was a little out of breath, but did not take long to catch up with me. "You won," she said, sounding disappointed.

I looked back at her face. "Yeah. I guess so."

"All right then." Without another word, Alandi reached back and unhinged my prize from her hair.

It was two days later, when Maia had sent us to fetch some fresh river water, when I insisted that I had a present for Alandi.

"I won this in a bet," I said. "So that means it's mine to give to whoever I want."

Frowning, she opened her hand. Resting in her palm like an egg in its nest was that same shiny metal pin.


	7. River

_**Give me a withered flower, and I**__**'**__**ll cry for it.**_

_**I'll hold it tenderly in my palm,**_

_**I'll shield it from the wind, so it won't blow away.**_

_**Then I'll reach only a little forward,**_

_**Place it gently on the ground.**_

_**And if I do,**_

_**Will you cry as well?**_

**

* * *

****7. River**

A wide, deep, and bitingly cold river runs around the edge of town, its nearest point just fifty steps away from the nearest buildings. I know, because I've counted them before.

Alandi and I would scramble along the banks collecting stones, and later this was where we learned to swim and dive. As soon as we emerged, we would shiver and giggle through chattering teeth, and rub the tiny goosebumps from our arms. My skin would turn to near white, and even my friend's complexion would be pale.

This is where I find Alandi with the coming of first light. She stares at the water, entranced by the way it shifts and flows. The ripples reflect the yellow of the dawn, sparkling as I imagine a song would sparkle if we could ever see the sound of voices.

A twig snaps beneath my feet, and Alandi is startled by the noise. I did not realise that she had failed to hear me until now. But then she turns, face shaded a little against the reflected lights. I see that there are tears in her eyes, and I see that her face is marked with radiating lines of red.


	8. Paint

**8. Paint**

_If one of us must be taken today, then let it be me. Not Alandi. Me._

She followed me to the hospital with the covered windows, crying all the way. "Please," she begged. "Don't leave me." But I couldn't go inside with her. My legs would not move. I was weak. A coward. I ran.

I am quick to reach the highest accessible point of the tallest dome in our settlement. Cold air burns inside me, a sharp, biting pain like a rope against my chest. Dust blows into my eyes and chest, but I make no move to shield myself.

_Coward_. I deserve to feel its sting. It mingles with the tears already gathering in my eyes. My fingers ache as one hand clasps the dome's jagged edge. I lean forward, looking down. The ground is a patchwork of textured sand.

How easy it would be, just to let go…

They called me a miracle. Their gift; their hope. The boy who would live. Tears spill all the way down to my chin, but I will not wipe them away. It only takes a single step to back away from the building's edge.

_Coward._

My other hand holds a folded cloth scroll, containing every possible hue of powdered flora and stone. I sit on the edge of the farthest beam, with the plain extended before me like a blanket, and unfurl the case so that its colours are arrayed in a row across my knees.

_Not Alandi. Me._

The old man at the edge of town once told me how to mix a rainbow of colours, and blend them together to create something beautiful. Green from crushed leaves. Yellow from the dust of the surrounding rocks. Blue, white, orange, black, and red. The powder mixes easily with water from a flask at my waist. My fingers are sticky and trembling as I dip them into the crimson paint and smear it in uneven lines across my face.


	9. Life

**9. Life**

"She's asking to see you."

It is Maia who approaches. I do not turn to see her, but I can hear her voice as it whispers from somewhere behind me. Then I see her shadow come into my sight, and now she can see me as well. She speaks my name.

"Julen… What have you done?"

_Stupid_. I reach into the river, beside which I have been crouching, and scrub as hard as I can at the paint across my face. _It has to come off. It has to_…

Again, there is that whispered voice. "Why, love? Why?"

"My mother died for me. I want to die for Alandi."

"No, my boy," Maia whispers in my ear. "Your mother never died for you."

I cannot keep the stabbing anger from rising in my belly. "What do you mean? Of course she…"

"She _lived_ for you." It is enough to cut short all my protests. "She fought for life until her very last breath, so that you could have the chance to grow. And that is easily as courageous as dying for someone. Don't die for Alandi, precious child. Live for her."

I wonder if that is my mother's shade I can hear on the passing breeze. _Live for her, my wonderful son. Be a poet, healer, spinner of dreams. All these things are within your reach_.

_All you need to do is reach for them._


	10. Flower, Part II

**10. Flower Part II**

The flower I once saw is long dead now. But I was five when I watched it shift in the wind. She would look so beautiful, I thought, with wildflowers in a crown around her hair.

But after just a moment, holding to the image as though it were delicate as a wilted leaf, I stood and turned away. The best gift I could pass to that flower was to leave it where it was. Let it grow. Let it live.

One day there will be flowers all around.

_**

* * *

**_

_**Give me a wounded star, and I'll heal it.**_

_**I'll rub away its bruises, and make it shine.**_

_**I'll guide it back to its place in the sky.**_

_**Then I'll give it a laugh, and a flower,**_

_**And a crumpled leaf to mend.**_

_**And if I do,**_

_**Will you notice?**_


End file.
